Before he finished Stage 1, his magazine came apart and dumped it's contents at his feet. After 2 more shots, the second one did as well. It looked like a rail holding the floor plate sheared off, allowing spring, cartridges, and mag parts to fall out, in both cases.

Is this a common problem with Walthers?

__________________Irresponsible use of alcohol kills many times those killed by guns. And look what happened to PROHIBITION 100 years ago!

I can't comment on P99 - but I did have a P22 which has some weird issues as well. The trigger wouldn't cock all the way in DA mode, and fall about half way up. Needless to say, kinda turned me off Walthers in general.

Before he finished Stage 1, his magazine came apart and dumped it's contents at his feet. After 2 more shots, the second one did as well. It looked like a rail holding the floor plate sheared off, allowing spring, cartridges, and mag parts to fall out, in both cases.

Is this a common problem with Walthers?

A. Your title is totally misleading as Mecgar makes Walther mags

B. Mecgar mags are superb

C. Sounds to me like he had disassembled his mags recently for cleaning and didn't resassemble them correctly or he has monkeyed with the mags.

I have three Tripp Research Cobra mags (supposedly the best in the industry) that lost the base plates while I was shooting some hot loads through my Delta Elite. Got them replaced by Tripp Research, took them out and one of them puked the guts.

Back in the early 2000's there was a revision to the 12-rd .40 mag butt plates due to similar breakage that occurred in some LE guns, mostly when the mags were being dropped onto hard surfaces (like concrete).

Of course, hitting the bottom of a duty weapon's grip frame against hard objects, especially carried in an exposed holster, has resulted in damage to mag butt/floor plates over the years, as well.

As I recall, Walther had Mec-Gar change the butt plate of the 99 series hi-cap mags to make it more resistant to that sort of impact damage. (The 10-rd butt plates are already pretty thick.)

This sort of thing isn't exactly unknown among firearm manufacturers who make LE/Gov service pistols, though, and other manufacturers have experienced it upon occasion. I remember when some LE Sig shooters were having breakage issues with old style mag butt plates, when they were being dropped during training/quals, for example.

I haven't experienced that sort of damage while training, practicing & qualifying with either my issued SW9940 (when I carried one for a few years) or my personally-owned SW99's, but then the agency range I typically use has a soft sand surface. I was lucky when using some outside agency outdoor ranges for field training, as most of the range surfaces were grass or soft dirt, but there were also a few with concrete and gravel surfaces. Those are hard on mags and their butt/floor plates.